


the world is dark, the night is long (you’re leaving me soon, like hell you are)

by craftingdead



Series: charlie will make cd a common tag if it kills them [35]
Category: The Crafting Dead
Genre: Fluff and Humor, Friends With Benefits, Gen, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Reveal, Secret Relationship, Trans Nick (Crafting Dead), Vomiting, also theres a sorta gorey scene at the beginning but it doesnt play a huge part, emetophobia tw, hehehehehheheehehehehehe, oh that comes into play that fuckin comes into play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-11 21:49:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19935049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/craftingdead/pseuds/craftingdead
Summary: Weirdly enough, the first signs aren’t even from Nick at all. He doesn’t start feeling off until a week, a week and a half later. Up until that point, he’s practically fine—a cramp here, a weird sensation there, a strong surge of emotions off to the side—and no one can tell him any different. And besides, why wouldn’t he be fine? Everything was going alright in the CDC, for what seemed like the first time in forever, and people were happy.“What’s up with him?” AK comments from his own seat, hunched over a bowl of cereal that was slowly starting to fall off his spoon.“I don’t know.” And Nick doesn’t.





	the world is dark, the night is long (you’re leaving me soon, like hell you are)

**Author's Note:**

> the title is from moonbeam by lord huron!
> 
> i wrote most of this to an instrumental of sweater weather by the neighbourhood so if you want to set a mood, read this to that. this could technically play into the kali&evie-verse (seeing as specific things are not specificed/explained completely) but that's 100% up to you

Weirdly enough, the first signs aren’t even from Nick at all. He doesn’t start feeling off until a week, a week and a half later. Up until that point, he’s practically fine—a cramp here, a weird sensation there, a strong surge of emotions off to the side—and no one can tell him any different. And besides, why wouldn’t he be fine? Everything was going alright in the CDC, for what seemed like the first time in forever, and people were healthy, happy, and fed. Even AK and Uni, the cynicalistic, paranoid assholes, were starting to let loose and have fun.

People used to say that dogs just knew things, even if they shouldn’t. Even if there was no way for them to comprehend the idea, the possibility, of whatever was happening. Man’s best friend just have a way with their senses, and there is nothing that their owner can get past them. Nothing at all.

And Nick and Yoti sure were a set—after he almost forgot the dog back at Heyworth, on their boat, he had been extra careful to make sure the dog wasn’t left anywhere, wasn’t locked up. So that’s how Yoti ended up trotting after Nick most of the time.

Yoti has always been protective of him. That’s just a general fact; ever since Nick helped him out from under that log, he’s been like a little guardian angel.

But one day… one day something shifts, just slightly, and it’s all… it all changes from there.

Sure, Yoti will attack walkers and people if they attack Nick or the group. The infection can only really spread to humans and, on occasion, rats and mice, as their immune systems are extremely familiar—and Doctor Jin did confirm that Ross often used mice as a substitute for humans at the beginning of his experiments—so it doesn’t affect him too much, other than having to get a hose down if the walker he attacks is particularly bloody; can’t have any of that blood get into an open wound, no matter how small. It’s just too risky.

“That dog would die for you,” Uni says, impressed, almost jealous, in a way. Yoti’s a good dog, best friend, and Nick couldn’t agree more; but he would never let anything like that happen to Yoti unless it was his time naturally. Properly.

And Yoti would never deliberately put himself in harm’s way. He’s a smart dog, despite what AK swears as he steals his lunch for the fifth time in a month with a wisp of a smile on Nick’s face. He knows when to get involved and when to leave. Calculated, almost, the way he understands the difference between something he can take and something he cannot. Human.

That all goes down the fucking gutter.

Nick walks into the room one day and Yoti’s head shoots up. It isn’t unusual—he usually does that whenever Nick enters rooms. Trots over and rests in his lap, despite the dog weighing more than Nick does. (Ghetto’s gone from convinced that Yoti is a coyote to convinced that Yoti is a fucking wolf, and Nick wouldn’t be surprised.) But something changes today.

He does his usual, trots over, jumps up next to Nick and then lays his head down in his lap. It always pissed Gray off, letting Yoti just lay and walk around wherever he wanted, but he couldn’t separate Nick from his dog. He sniffs, deeper than usual, but that doesn’t tip Nick off at first. They were at the CDC—the fucking  _ CDC, _ there were bound to be new smells almost every day. And Yoti was ever curious.

Instead of laying his head back down, Yoti looks up at him. Curious. Wondering. He sniffs again and whines low in his throat, twisting over and exposing his belly before flipping over again and settling back in Nick’s lap, restless.

“What’s up with him?” AK comments from his own seat, hunched over a bowl of cereal that was slowly starting to fall off his spoon.

“I don’t know.” And Nick doesn’t. Yoti still has that look of mild curiosity on his face, but it’s mixed with worry as well. And he doesn’t seem to calm down when Nick scratches the back of his ears or the length of his back.

“Maybe he’s smelled something that he doesn’t like?” Shark offers as he walks into the room.

“Maybe,” Nick says, and then sighs. Yoti whines again, softly, and looks up at him with those big eyes of his. “I’ll ask Gray if anything—or anyone—new came in last night or this morning. He doesn’t usually act like this.”

Yoti calms down soon after that, but he still paces more than usual. He’s restless and follows Nick around more relentlessly than before. Whines whenever Nick gets too close to someone he doesn’t know as well. And so Nick chalks it up to an interaction or sighting of someone new that he didn’t quite trust. Nick swears Yoti can scent treachery, from how much he liked biting at Cory’s ankles. Presses up against Nick’s legs and stares down people in the hall.

The extent of his change really starts to show up one day when they go on a patrol. There have been more walkers out and about, so they sent him and a few other people to deal with them and make sure there have been no major changes in the city. Once, Gray told them that a wall had broken loose of an old apartment building. It was full of walkers. Wasn’t a good week.

It’s very easy to deal with walkers. At least, for other people, it is. Nick still feels biting guilt whenever he raises a gun, whenever he takes aim, but he shuts his eyes tight and pulls the trigger. Takes him a bit longer to recover, and he’s panting, breathless. His ears ring afterward.

“You alright, Nick?” AK calls. He’s standing with a shotgun in his hands, and Nick can’t think of anything more ironic than AK asking him if he’s alright with a shotgun in his hands. Then shakes his head, shaking himself out of that mindset in the way. He’s been thinking of more morbid shit like that recently, for whatever reason. Gets upset more easily, too.

“I’m fine,” Nick says, waving off his concern. 

AK nods, and then points behind him. “Hey, watch out,” he says, voice bordering between alarm and normality; Nick turns and sees a walker a few feet behind him. He groans, slightly, unfortunately, takes a few steps back, tightens his grip, and—

And, instead, Yoti is there. He tackles the walker to the ground. Usually, that’s where he would stop, unless it was a very serious situation. He would hold the thing down until one of them could get a shot in—or, at the very least, immobilize it. He didn’t like the taste of walkers one bit, so he tried not to bite them whenever he could—one of the few times Nick can actually remember him fully attacking and taking down a walker was at Barney’s cabin, walking back with Jess, arms full of firewood, and getting caught off guard and then watching the same dog from earlier take it down, howling.

But Yoti doesn’t stop there. He’s growling uncharacteristically, lips pulled back in a snarl, exposing his teeth, and before Nick can even raise his hand to aim, Yoti bends down, digs his teeth into the walkers neck, and tears out its fucking throat.

“Jesus Christ!” Shark yells from somewhere in the distance, and when Nick turns he’s watching Yoti with some kind of horrified expression, yet also a sick curiosity. “What’s gotten into him? Has he finally developed a taste for human flesh?”

“I think Yoti’s grown into a big dog now and is ready to kill people at your command, Nick,” AK deadpans.

Yoti pulls back, gore and blood dripping from his mouth, and Nick (almost) gags—uncharacteristic of him. It’s weird—he’s never bothered by blood and gore, usually, he couldn’t, living in this apocalypse but, right now, it’s making him want to find the nearest trash can and throw up breakfast.

He shakes the blood droplets off of his muzzle, steps away from the corpse, and trots over to the group. He keeps his distance from the rest of the group until, suddenly, he’s springing into a rather large puddle and rolling all around in it. Shark yells in surprise as he hops out and shakes his coat off all over him. Nick’s laughing. Yoti’s learned to do that after he kills walkers—just in case. And, when they can’t find puddles, it’s always fun drenching the dog after exhausting days. Makes thing a little more upbeat, a little less depressing.

As they’re walking back to the CDC, Shark leans over to him and whispers, with a hand pressed against the side of his mouth, “I think Yoti’s staring at me too intensely for what he just did.”

Nick looks down at Yoti. He growls at Shark when he wanders too close to Nick. He kneels down, cups Yoti’s face in his hands, and says, despite not knowing,  _ “Good boy.” _

—

A week later, things start to change more. Again, it’s slow—the real shit doesn’t truly start showing until a few days later. It’s a slow onset, surprisingly. He’s peaceful, he’s happy, he’s ignorant in the best (and worst) way possible. It’s discrete, a small change, just a wrinkle of his nose. It’s the calm before the storm, even—sure, something’s slightly off, but nothing too big. And, besides, how bad can it be?

“What the hell’s that?” he mutters to himself, quite literally wrinkling his nose as he walks into the cafeteria one day, Yoti trotting loyally after him. He’s gotten even worse since the walker incident. He almost mauled AK, but the dude kind of deserved it, so Nick brushed it off.

“Hey, Nick!” Shark calls over to him. “We made breakfast. Would you believe it, me and Jess figured out how to make bacon, eggs, and pancakes. Gray thought we would blow up the kitchen, but we didn’t, so that’s a win!”

The bacon and pancakes smell delicious, Nick realizes that quickly. Yoti is staring at Shark’s plate with a hungry look in his eyes and his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth. (Shark slowly inches his plate closer to his body.) But they’re not quite enough to cover up the other… gross smell. He guesses that it’s the eggs. But there was no way Jess would let something smelling this shitty pass, so it must just be him, or something.

Jess smiles at him. Ghetto’s sitting next to her, staring at him with lidded eyes and a lazy smirk, and Nick has to resist the urge to shiver. “You want anything, Nick?” she asks him. “I’m cleaning up my plate, now. I can get you something.”

He’s hungry, that’s for sure. But there’s no way he’ll be able to choke down those eggs, or anything around them, not with his nose acting all funky. Maybe he’s coming down with a weird kind of cold, or something. Forces a smile. “Thank you for offering, Jess, but I’m actually not that hungry. I might come back for something later.” Jess squints, slightly, before nodding.

Nick takes a seat next to Ghetto and Yoti leaps up next to him, curls up in Nick’s lap, eyes Shark’s plate before he throws a piece of bacon the dog’s way. 

He wants to be able to talk more, but for fuck’s sake—he hates Shark’s cooking, now, Nick decides. Well, maybe not all his cooking, but just his eggs. He has to physically steady himself and prevent himself from running to the bathroom and lurching a few times. Fuck, eggs have been ruined for him. Thanks, Shark, for ruining a perfectly fine breakfast food. He wrinkles his nose and almost sighs in relief when everyone’s finished up.

“What, you don’t like my cooking?” Shark accuses, pointing at him, and Nick laughs at how right it actually is. Ghetto’s hand splays across his lower back.

“Hey,” Nick says back, propping himself up with his hands and leaning over to glare at Shark, “for all you know, I could have hated your cooking this entire time. I could have been lying to everyone and suffering through it to successfully manipulate you into believing that you could actually cook. Did that ever come to mind?”

“Actually, no, it didn’t, because it’s fucking batshit.”

Jess cackles from the kitchen. Ghetto grins, leans over, and then says, “Why did you tell him? We were getting so far,” low in Nick’s ear and Shark looks almost furious, almost accusative, almost outraged, almost smiling.

“I knew it. You guys have always hated me and my kitchen skills. I can’t believe you all—lying to me? For months? I thought we were friends! You could have just told me if I was shit at cooking and I would never have stepped foot in a kitchen again.”

“Wait, no, we didn’t say that,” Jess says hurriedly, shoving a piece of bacon in her mouth as Shark’s back is turned. “You can stay since we’re all even more terrible at cooking. Isn’t that right, Nick, Ghetto?”

“Oh, absolutely.” Ghetto’s grin stretches even wider, if possible. “I almost burnt down my parents’ house one time attempting to cook. Only was allowed to cook my own food if it was takeover in the microwave, and that was even stretching it far. They put a sign on the oven that said ‘GHETTO NOT ALLOWED.’ A disappointment, really.”

The argument goes far past food—Shark’s laundry habits get sucked in (“I forgot to clean up dirty underwear one time! One time! And they weren’t even that dirty!”) and then Jess is getting accused of attempting to poison them. 

Ghetto excuses himself (to laugh) to get more of Shark’s food before everyone else wakes up and devours the rest and the same lurching feeling stirs in his stomach as he sits back down. Ugh. He thought he avoided this as Shark does the same. It smells as bad as it did before and he can’t believe he’s the only fucking one to realize this—it has to be just him, there’s no other way unless this is some kind of elaborate prank, but why the hell would his senses be messed up like this? The smell burns in the back of his throat and he can taste bile.

“You okay, Nick?” Ghetto asks, resting a hand on his thigh, and Nick must have been making a face. He lets himself relax, takes in a deep breath that he regrets soon after, and then smiles. Yoti shuffles in his lap and whines again, propping his chin up on his knee.

“I’m fine. I actually should get AK up. He’d kick our asses if we let everything good get eaten before he gets out here,” Nick tells him, shrugs off Ghetto’s hand and stands up. Shark nods, muttering “smart” through a mouthful of food. Jess looks suspicious.

He gets the same feeling when he walks into the common room the next morning. Some of Gray’s men are drinking something that looks suspiciously like booze, and the smell is strong enough to make Nick feel faint, even, from the hallway outside of it. And that means no breakfast, either, seeing as the cafeteria is just close enough to the common room for the smell to follow Nick to the entrance before he makes a B-line back to his room so he can calm down his tied knot of a stomach.

Eating gets… kind of weird, too, in a way.

It’s not like he’s not hungry anymore—he actually gets even hungrier, sometimes. But nothing—ugh, this makes him sound like a fucking child—nothing really appeals. He chokes down whatever is for breakfast, lunch, and dinner on the days they’re called together for it and raids Shark’s sweets on the days that they’re not. (He has Lucky Charms that he’s been hiding from them and Nick has to resist the urge to strangle him when he finds out. They have marshmallows in them, for fuck’s sake!)

He  _ wants  _ to eat—he does eat! Jess can get off his ass about not eating enough, now! But it’s more of a dissatisfaction. He doesn’t have the energy to get any of the food they  _ do  _ have. Nick eventually chalks it up to his depression kicking back in, which is fun, but no other symptoms show, other than the occasional mood swing.

Then he chalks it up to stress. Think about it: They haven’t been attacked or confronted by Red or Ross in a long while. Too long, almost. It starts to worry him more, their radio silence, he starts worrying more, he loses his appetite. Makes sense.

But he isn’t stressed. Nick’s happen, even, with his current situation. The CDC is warm and peaceful and summer’s on the horizon, the June days starting to get hotter, and people start wearing shorts and tank tops and flowy clothes and it’s fun, fun to watch Gray yell at people for not covering up enough (“You’re fighting zombies! The more exposed you are, the higher the chance they can bite you!”) and it’s  _ fun  _ sneaking away with Ghetto to go kiss in his room, the door unlocked, giggling at the idea of someone walking in on them and exposing everything.

It has to be his depression. Or something. The idea of it not having an explanation scares Nick more than the idea of it being his mental health. What if it’s the start of a cold or the flu or some other illness or something? And he’s tired of feeling the need to throw up whenever he walks into a room with just  _ one  _ thing off.

But it doesn’t get worse, nor does it change. Stays the same, mostly, with the occasional reaction to food changing—he can finally eat eggs and Nick almost cheers out loud when he walks in for breakfast and doesn’t double over. Nick finally chalks it up with just some weird thing with food and his attitude. The idea of being able to have a consistent food source fucking with him, or something. And there’s no way it can get worse.

—

Nick wakes up in a cold sweat. It’s weird and sticks to his body uncomfortably, and he sits up in bed, feeling dizziness overcome him and hit him like a truck as his head reels. Shit. Where did this come from? He wonders as he tries to get his breathing and his head under control. There. Focus on that door. Try and continue on when you stop seeing three of it. See? Now there’s just one. Wait, hold on a minute, it’s still spinning, hold on, and now—

He just makes it to a standing position, wobbling real bad, before his stomach lurches violently, even worse than days before, and then—

And then he’s never been more grateful that Ghetto’s room isn’t that far from a bathroom. Just across the hall, basically, and he’s one of the few people on this floor, considering that it’s close to the Lab, and no one likes the idea of something going wrong in there and them being the first to get affected by it. He tries to not slam the door on his way out, he swears!

Nick can barely turn on the lights and shut the door at least a  _ decent  _ amount before he's kneeling over the toilet and vomiting up everything he’d eaten from the last day into it, uncomfortably warm despite the cooled rooms and halls of the CDC.

Fuck, he’s always hated the sensation of being sick. It makes him feel much too vulnerable for his own good, too weak and fragile, even though those thoughts have all but been shoved out his mind by his friends. And he’s trembling hard and the back of his throat burns as there’s nothing left to throw up, so he’s left with a horrible nausea twisting in his stomach and throat as he slumps back against the wall, panting, half-naked with messy hair because  _ someone’s  _ body decided to be sick in the middle of the fucking night.

“Nick?” a voice calls from the doorway, and Ghetto’s looking in, messy and disheveled and shirtless (because Nick’s in his shirt) and looking like he just woke up—oh, wait. He did. “Are you alright, baby?”

Oh, that hurts. Nick swallows hard. Being called “baby.” It pulls at the traitorous little heartstrings in him that wants to pull further, push past just fucks on the side and something that leans between “friends with benefits” and “friends who kiss on occasion but no homo bromo.” And he’s too weak to try and push those thoughts away right now, so it sucks ass. Fucking feelings, man.

“I-I’m fine, now, I think,” Nick says. He’s shaking and his words come out stuttered, teeth chattering. Is he coming down with something?

Ghetto shuts the door behind him as he walks in and kneels next to Nick, pressing a hand against his forehead. Nick pretends like he doesn’t lean into it. “Dude, your head is super warm,” he murmurs, moving it away. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

He presses up next to Nick’s side and wraps an arm around his shoulders, pulling him in. Nick folds himself against Ghetto and soaks up his warmth—he’s shivering, after all, despite what Ghetto said about his forehead and about it burning up or whatever. “I don’t know,” he confesses. “I just woke up feeling like shit and—and then…”

“You’re warm, sure, but you don’t feel like you have an actual fever,” Ghetto tells him, turning his head to look at Nick with concern in his eyes. “Maybe it was something you ate, or a twenty-four-hour thing or some shit? Maybe Shark’s cooking really is shit. Maybe he like, purposely gave you food poisoning because you said his waffles tasted like shit that one time.”

“Maybe he’s trying to kill me so he can secure his place as the new leader.”

Ghetto snickers. “Then he’d have to go through both of us since I’m like your co-leader. If you go down I’m taking your place, you know that, right? I’ll avenge you if some bastard thinks they can steal our places as leader—”

Nick wants to continue paying attention to what Ghetto’s saying—he’s funny, and it’ll be bound to get his mood up. But it’s kind of—no, scratch that, it’s  _ very  _ hard to continue paying attention to Ghetto; his stomach turns again, vicious nausea rising without as much of a warning, and Nick can barely shove Ghetto away and lean over the toilet before he’s throwing up again, bile burning at the back of his throat, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes, and it rattles his entire body. He remembers his dad, always worried whenever he got sick because he was just so  _ small  _ when he was younger.

His hair is pulled back by one hand and the other is rubbing circles on his hip, a voice and body bent over his back and murmuring reassurances into his ear as Nick empties out his stomach for the second time and falls back into Ghetto’s chest and arms, shaking like a leaf.

“Fuck,” is all he’s able to force out. His voice is hoarse and shaky, throat burning like hell, stomach all twisted and turning and lurching. His mouth tastes acidic and, ugh, it’s fucking disgusting, really. His breath must smell bad too. Nick swipes his tongue around his mouth and nearly gags. Ghetto holds him close, murmuring the same reassurances as Nick remembers how to stand without throwing up.

“Let’s get your sick ass back to bed.”

“But—”

He’s cut off by Ghetto wrapping an arm around his thighs and lifting him up. Nick squeaks and nearly punches him in the face out of surprise. And then Ghetto fucking bridal carries him out of the bathroom (not before flushing the toilet, turning off the light and shutting the door) and back to his room, even though the walk was like, ten steps.

But Nick’s too exhausted to protest. Ghetto sets him down on the bed, pulling the covers over him, and Nick’s out before he can feel Ghetto climbing into the bed beside him and wrapping his arms around his waist, pulling Nick in close.

He should feel better by morning time, right? With a good night of rest (out of pure exhaustion, but still a full night of rest) and it out of his system, right?

Nick wakes up to even worse nausea and ends up in the exact same position as the night before, this time with Ghetto there the entire time. He thinks he hears Shark and AK sticking their heads in to ask, with concern in their voices, if he’s alright. Shelby joins Ghetto and rubs his back, leaning over him with concern on her face, instead.

“I’ll get some medicine for the nausea,” Jess says, the only logical person beside Ghetto and Shelby, and Ghetto forces it down his throat after she returns with pills and a glass of water. His mouth is so unbelievably dry it almost hurts going down.

“You should talk to Doctor Jin and the professor, once you’re feeling better,” Shelby says to him as he nearly collapses back into Ghetto’s bed. She doesn’t ask why he’s there, and Nick feels better that way. “This may just be a flu bug or something along those lines, but, still… you can never be too careful. And flu bugs can lead to nasty shit, especially in the apocalypse. You know, since it’s the fucking apocalypse.”

“Okay,” he murmurs into a pillow, “I’ll do it in the morning.”

“Nico, you dummy, it’s nine in  _ the morning,” _ she says, softly.

“Whatever. I’ll do it whenever I wake up.” Shelby climbs into bed next to him and curls up with her head on his chest, letting their legs tangle together like they did back when they were kids and Shelby caught a cold, Nick broke his leg, whatever it was.

There’s a very good chance of this sickness not being the infection. For one, the meds that Jess brought with her actually helped. It got him back to Ghetto’s room, after all. Two, he’s not hacking up a lung like—like the others did. Three, there’s no fucking way Ross could’ve snuck in without anyone noticing. The CDC was patrolled day and night, and Ghetto’s room didn’t exactly have the biggest window or the easiest way up to it. But still… the idea, it eats at him as he falls asleep, Shelby’s own breathing lulling him. The pressure is nice. It keeps the nausea down, at least a little bit—pressure’s good in that way. And he soon falls asleep (again) as well, snuggled up next to Shelby, despite his worrying thoughts.

When Nick wakes up he isn’t filled to the brim with nausea, or feeling as shitty as before, so that’s a plus. Shelby isn’t there, so a minus to go with it. He sits up, carefully, and his head doesn’t spin. Stand up and he doesn’t double over.

So, now, he has basically no choice but to go visit Doctor Jin and Professor Xavier. Nick winces, slightly, and sighs. He was hoping to avoid that. But, he had no choice now—if Shelby saw him, she would drag his ass all the way there, no matter what he said. And that would be better than if Nick just visited them himself.

“Oh, hello, Nick!” Jin calls out to him, looking up from a microscope. “Uh, sorry, I wasn’t expecting you. Let me clean up a bit.” Nick smiles politely as Jin stacks a few papers and pushes them to the side, orderly and neat, and snaps off some medical gloves he’d been wearing. As he walks towards Nick, he drops them in a trash can and rubs his hands together as if to get the feeling off of them. “So, what can I help you with?”   


“I was actually looking for Professor Xavier,” Nick says, awkwardly, rubbing the back of his head. “You know, since you yelled at us—said to go to him instead of you for… for general medical stuff since you’re better at science than you are patching up wounds or checking for illness…”

“Oh,” Jin blanches. “Yeah, forgot I said that. That was mainly a joke, I can check up things for  _ you, _ and he’s busy right now. Is anything wrong?”

Nick nods and then hesitates as Jin cocks his head to the side. “I… I guess, in a way. Shelby was worried so she told me to go check in with you or the professor, but I don’t think it’s that big of a deal, really…”

“What is it?” Jin pushes.

“Ugh, starting last night—God, probably three AM—I woke up feeling like shit with really bad nausea. Stood up and immediately threw up. I managed to fall back asleep, but for most of this morning, I was sick as a dog. In all technicalities, this is the first time in hours I’ve been able to walk anywhere. Ghetto’s betting that I had a twenty-four-hour fever thing, but Shelby’s more concerned… for obvious reasons.”

“That makes sense,” Jin says. Thankfully, he doesn’t sound concerned. Just curious. “Have you had any other symptoms? Coughing, trouble navigating, hallucinations, even? It doesn’t sound like the infection at all, but I just want to be careful. And, even if it isn’t, those symptoms would make this a lot more serious than a twenty-four-hour fever.”

“No, no, none of that,” Nick reassures him quickly. Jin lets out an obvious sigh of relief as Nick continues. “The only other… really weird thing that’s been going on is a kind of… lack of appetite, I guess? Some smells make me feel really sick, for whatever reason. I’ve almost thrown up a few times before. And Yoti’s been acting really, really weird around me—super protective, barking at people who get too close to me, that kind of stuff.”

Nick’s too busy talking that he doesn’t see the color drain out of Jin’s face.

“Interesting,” he squeaks out, pale. “I-I mean, alright. I believe I know what is causing this, but for backup—I mean, uh, to confirm it, I’m going to be getting Professor Xavier to help. He is much, much more knowledgeable on these sorts of things. Are you alright with being on your own for a little bit?”

Nick nods, and Jin nearly sprints out of the Lab, sending papers flying. He’s confused by that, a bit. Jin isn’t the kind to be so careless. Or to act so nervous. What if it was something bad? 

Ugh. He shouldn’t be thinking about it. But the idea still gnaws at him as Nick gathers up all the papers and stacks them back on the table, casting his gaze to the side so he doesn’t accidentally read anything on there. He doesn’t know if Jin or Xavier want people to see what is on them, so he won’t look, just in case. Even if the restless anxiety makes him feel nauseous the moment he steps back.  _ Goddammit, stop overthinking things, Nick! _

He’s pacing by the time Jin gets back. Xavier looks calm, collected—the exact opposite of Jin’s expression and Nick’s feelings, but he’s used to these kinds of things. How much older was he than Nick—almost twenty years, or so? Damn.

“Jin tells me that you’ve been feeling off-kilter recently, and has asked me for you to list out your symptoms once again, so I can confirm his hypothesis… whatever that may be,” Xavier says, coolly, swooping upon Nick. “So?”

Nick looks over his shoulder at Jin, brows furrowed. He looks… nervous? Wow. He really thought that Jin would have told Xavier before they got there. Hmm. “Well, I was really sick this morning and last night—throwing up, nausea, that kind of stuff. And my sense of smell and taste have been all messed up. Just smelling something can make me feel like I need to throw up, and I’ve had a weird lack of appetite for things lately. And Yoti’s been acting really weird… unnecessarily protective and stuff. He almost mauled AK the other day.”

“Mmm-hmm.” Xavier’s chewing on his lip, thinking. “And how long has… all of this been going on for?”

“The Yoti thing started a little over two weeks ago. The nausea around one week ago, and I started getting sick last night, so two and a half weeks? Maybe three, if I didn’t notice Yoti’s behavior before? Three weeks.”

“Alright!” Xavier says, smiling this time. “I do believe I know what is going on, but I’m going to have to take a blood test for it. Do you know what a Quantitative Blood Test is, Nick?”

“No,” Nick tells him. It does sound… vaguely familiar, in a way, but Nick can’t quite put his finger on it. Maybe he’s heard about it in a show or something? It sounds like some bullshit that would be used for a drama plot point in a doctor show. “No, I don’t.”

“Well,” Xavier starts, “It’s just a sort of blood test. I draw some blood, we test it and determine if the results line up with our train of thought. I’m sure you know what blood tests are, so this shouldn’t take long. Can you roll up your right sleeve for me, if you don’t mind? You are left-handed if I am correct?”

“No. No, I don’t,” Nick says hastily, rolling up the sleeve of his sweater. “And, yes, I am left-handed.”

“Good, good, I was sure I remembered that correctly.”

Nick holds out his arm for him as Xavier walks back over in medical gloves with a needle and a tube and some sort of elastic band. He wraps it around Nick’s upper arm and tightens it, making Nick flinch slightly. With an apologetic look, he attaches the tube to the back of the needle, cleans off a spot with alcohol and Nick looks away as he inserts it into his vein, flinching badly. Even as an adult, he still hates needles.

“Jin, can you get him a bandage?” Jin nods. “The results shouldn’t take that long to come in. At most, an hour or two,” he then whispers to Nick. “Don’t worry—there’s nothing to be worried about, honestly.”

Then he goes over to some… science equipment? Lab shit? Nick, in all honesty, has no idea what it is. He was never the most interested in this kind of science—health, chemistry, anything to do with molecules and atoms and vaccines and infections. It all bored him. He wanted to know why the wind shifted, why the tide turned, why dogs domesticated themselves for humans, how they did, volcanoes, nature, earth—that kind of shit. It was always so much more fascinating. His dad used to joke about how he should be a geologist when he grew up. Rich always shut that down, saying that he could take all the time he wanted to figure things out. Wait until he was older. With someone. Trapped. Nick shudders.

Time passes quicker than Nick realizes. It does end up taking an hour and a half for results to come back, and, in that time, Nick has memorized every cabinet on the wall, every paper strewn around, how many scratches are on the table surface. He’s very, very nervous.

“So!” Xavier announces, strolling back to him with his arms swinging and a strangled smile on his face. “Good news, very good news—you’re not infected! But we gathered that by now.”

“Bad news, it’s a lot more complicated than just a simple ‘infection,’” Jin says. Xavier slaps him on the arm and glowers at him as Nick squeaks out a strangled “what?”   


“You have an… higher—elevated amount of the human chorionic gonadotropin—hCG hormone in your body. And, uh, by your reaction, I’m guessing that you don’t know what that is,” Xavier tells him, and he actually sounds sort of nervous.

It sounds even more familiar than the blood test thing did. Fuck, where has he heard that stuff before? Nick’s memory never quite recovered from his weird amnesia thing and sometimes he forgets and remembers things in bits and pieces, scratching at the surface of his brain, just out of reach, tantalizing. “It sounds familiar,” Nick admits, “but I can’t quite remember what it is. Why? Is it anything bad?”

“Yes and no, depending on who you are. The hCG hormone can be produced in… a few situations. The most common one is what I believe you’re experiencing, and the cause of your ‘fever,’ by your symptoms and by the blood test. And, uh, the situation it is most commonly produced in is, uh…” he trails off, not meeting Nick’s eye. Jin shuffles on his feet.

“What? What is it? Is something wrong?”

Xavier inhales deeply and lets out a long breath. “Well,” he starts, “it might just be easier to ask you this question. Nick, I know that you’re transgender—we all do, actually, so I hope this isn’t a shock. Pray tell, when was the last time that you—hmm, that you had your period?”

“I can’t remember, a little while, I think? Sometimes it comes and goes depending on how much food and water we have and what situations we are and—” Nick cuts himself off, feels his eyes widen comically, feels like all the wind has been forced out of his chest. “Oh.”

Nick’s eyes snap open. And he pushes himself to a sitting position. Xavier and Jin are both hovering above him, in a room that looks more like the one he stayed in after he got shot than the Lab—they must have moved him here. But he couldn’t really remember… uh, remember how any of that happen. Why was he here?

“What—” he starts but is cut off by Xavier, who leans forward to look him in the eye.

“You fainted,” he states, bluntly. “You weren’t out for long, don’t worry. It’s only been a few minutes since we got you here. Jin almost tore a ligament rushing to catch you. I’ll be honest with you, Nick, that wasn’t exactly the reaction I was… hmm, expecting. But again, in your current condition, I shouldn’t be surprised by anything that happens.”

“If you don’t remember our earlier talk, you have a parasite growing inside of you, Nick,” Jin says, in an amazingly deadpan voice.

Xavier slaps his arm. “Jin!” he exclaims, scandalized. “Do  _ not  _ word it like that! You will only freak him out more. We can’t let him be doing anything risky or—or freaking out, in his condition!”— _ (“You’re making it sound like a disease!”) _ —”You started it. Anyways, Nick, if you would like some time to yourself for right now, I’d suggest doing that. Lying down, maybe. We don’t need to check up on anything big right now. But please, come back in the morning. Oh, and,” he adds to Nick in a low voice, “find out or—or tell the father, would you?”

—

He stumbles through the halls of the CDC, hand just hovering above his stomach, not touching, and thinks about finding the nearest bathroom and puking his guts out again, if anything to make this a little more solid and less like a hallucination.

Thankfully, he doesn’t run into anyone the first few minutes. He’s too dazed to say anything, to think anything, and he’s just glad he wasn’t forced to explain anything, either.

Not-so thankfully, he runs into Jess and Sky right before he gets to his room. By then, Nick’s managed to play off his hysterical daze into something bordering on feverish, so it’s less like he got told news that felt like he got kicked off a roof and more like he’s sick and just got out of bed and his head is  _ fucking killing him. _ Sky gives him a sympathetic smile—Jess must have filled him in—but Jess takes one look at him, her mouth falls open and she says, blurts out—

“You’re  _ pregnant?” _

He… Nick does not know how to respond to that. It’s not like it isn’t true, because it fucking is now, or whatever, but still. Thanks for the punch in the gut, Jess. Really appreciate that, bud. “W-what?” he forces out, his throat starting to burn and if he throws up on the ground in front of Sky and Jess he’s going to lose his fucking mind—

“Jess!” Sky wheels on her. “What the fuck, lady? You can’t just go around yelling that at anyone who looks mildly sick. He might not be comfortable with those kinds of jokes—”

“Sky,” Jess cuts him off, stomping her foot down. “Look at him. Seriously, take a good hard fucking look at him and tell me I’m wrong. Look at him! I was suspicious before, but this is practically confirmation! Oh, you checked in with Xavier and Jin and they confirmed it. That’s why you’re looking so out of it, isn’t it?”   


Sky turns to him, as if getting ready to apologize—sorry, Nick, Jess is just a dumb whore who doesn’t know when to shut up—and then stops. Takes a step back. Lifts his hand to his chin and really takes a deep and proper look at him. And then: “Holy shit, Jess, I think you might be right. He’s totally knocked up. You’re almost glowing. No wonder you were throwing up so much this morning, dude, the fun’s just started.”

“Oooh, who’s is it?” Jess demands, waving her hands around in the air. “Is it Ghetto’s? You two totally look like you’ve been fucking, ten bucks if it’s Ghetto’s. Twenty if you’re together.”

“Hey, I’ll put a good five, six each on AK and Shark. Who knows,” Sky rebuffs.

“I-I’ve got to go,” Nick stutters, turns on his heel and sprints off.

As he rounds the corner, he hears Jess and Sky arguing behind him. (“Good going, Sky!” she yells at him, probably with her hands on her hips. “Hey, how was I supposed to know he’d freak out? And you were the one who started this whole thing!” he yells back, probably with his hands in the air.) He’s going the wrong direction—away from his room, and where he wants to be. Almost unconsciously, Nick finds himself wandering towards Ghetto’s room and his empty stretch of hallway. He’s probably in there right now, doing whatever, relaxing after a supply run—Gray did ask him to go on one, despite his protests, and—

Ghetto opens the door. “Hey, Nick,” he says with a warm smile, a towel thrown over his shoulders, his hair wet. Thankfully, he has pants on, but he’s shirtless because he apparently likes to fucking  _ show off. _ Nick’s breath catches in his throat.

“Can I come in?” Nick says. Ghetto’s face drops, and he opens his door wider, gesturing into his room. There must’ve been a tone of voice that Nick had. “I need to talk to you about… something.”

“Ironically, there’s been something I’ve been meaning to tell you as well,” Ghetto says under his breath as he shuts the door. Nick sits down on his bed, chewing on his lip. “Well, what is it?”

“You tell me yours first,” Nick blurts out. He doesn’t want to admit it just yet. Maybe it’ll give him more time to think.

“How about we say it at the same time?” Ghetto suggests.

Fuck. Well, he wouldn’t be thinking about any ideas in the first place, because he would be listening to Ghetto. Nick bites down on his lip, hard enough to draw blood, and the coppery taste fills his mouth unpleasantly. “Alright.”

“On the count of three.” Ghetto raises three fingers into the air. “One, two, three—”

“I’m pregnant.”

“I think I’m in love with you.”   


_ SHIT. _


End file.
